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Friday, April 24, 2026

Iran makes frantic move to store overflowing oil supply — in sign regime is nearing brink

 Iran is scrambling to get a massive crude carrier to Kharg Island, in a sign that President Trump’s blockade is bringing the regime’s oil-critical hub — which controls roughly 90% of Iranian crude oil exports — to the brink, according to a report.

Tehran has been forced to take a 30-year-old oil tanker, Nasha, out of retirement as Kharg Island nears its maximum onshore capacity, Gulf News reported Friday.

The vessel, which has been anchored empty for the past several years, is being revived as floating storage for Iran’s teeming crude supply, the outlet reported. 

The desperate move to revive the M/T Nasha oil tanker comes as Kharg Island nears its onshore storage capacity, Gulf News reported.Gallo Images via Getty Images

The tired oil tanker is currently en route to the Islamic Republic’s primary crude oil export terminal, according to data from TankerTrackers.com

The frantic move comes as Kharg Island’s remaining spare storage could fill up in just 12 to 13 days, with Iran’s net oil inflow running around 1 million barrels per day, analysts told Gulf News.

Congestion at the regime’s most critical oil stronghold could spiral into a major national economic problem for the regime, the outlet noted.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Friday that Iran still has an “open window” for negotiations with the US — but warned that “the clock is not on their side” with the naval blockade targeting all ships coming from or traveling to Iranian ports.

Washington’s naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies and sparked a global energy crisis. US Central Command Public Affairs/US NAVY/AFP via Getty Images

In the wee hours one night this week, US forces seized a sanctioned Iranian-flagged oil tanker bound for Singapore as it tried to sneak past American ships in the darkness. 

At least three other Iranian capital ships were intercepted in Asian waters near India, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka on Wednesday, according to American shipping and security sources. 

And on Friday, the US added a third military aircraft carrier to its arsenal in the Middle East. 

The USS George H.W. Bush — a 1,000-foot-long nuclear-powered carrier that can transport more than 80 aircraft — will significantly bolster the blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has made its displeasure with the arrangement frighteningly clear. 

Three container ships were hit by Iranian gunfire in the critical chokehold on Wednesday – just hours after Trump announced he was indefinitely extending a cease-fire agreement with the Islamic Republic. 

Iran said it captured two of the ships that were seeking to exit the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, marking its first seizures since the war began.

President Trump said Thursday that he plans to resume bombing Iran if there’s no peace deal – arguing that Tehran, not the US, is under pressure due to the trade blockade.EyePress News/Shutterstock

Senior Iranian leadership was expected to arrive in Pakistan on Friday or Saturday for talks, government sources from both countries told The Post.

However, the meeting will most likely be bilateral between Islamabad and Tehran only, an Iranian source said.

Trump threatened to finish the war “militarily with the other 25% of the targets” if Iranian leaders “don’t want to make a deal,” he warned Thursday.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/24/world-news/iran-makes-frantic-move-to-store-overflowing-oil-supply-at-kharg-island/

US orders global diplomatic push over alleged Chinese AI distillation

 

Washington has directed diplomats worldwide to raise concerns about Chinese firms, including DeepSeek, allegedly distilling US AI models. The cable sharpens the technology dispute with Beijing ahead of Donald Trump's planned visit to China.

The US State Department has ordered a global push to bring attentionto what it says are widespread efforts by Chinese companies,including AI startup DeepSeek, to steal intellectual property fromU.S. artificial intelligence labs, according to a diplomatic cableseen by Reuters.

The cable said itspurpose was to "warn of the risks of utilizing AI modelsdistilled from US proprietary AI models, and lay the groundwork forpotential follow-up and outreach by the US government."

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/chinese-ai-distillation-deepseek-us-global-diplomatic-warning-2901269-2026-04-25

Oklo, NVIDIA, And Los Alamos Working On Plutonium-Powered AI

 Oklo announced an agreement with NVIDIA and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to advance critical nuclear infrastructure, AI-enabled research, and nuclear fuel R&D at Los Alamos.

The partnership aligns Oklo’s advanced reactor platform, NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure, and LANL’s deep expertise in materials science and nuclear fuels. Together, the trio aims to accelerate deployment of resilient, high-assurance energy while supporting the federal government’s Genesis Mission.

Initial projects focus on physics- and chemistry-based AI models for fuel validation, materials science and fabrication R&D on plutonium-bearing fuels, and grid reliability studies for nuclear-powered AI factories at LANL

This agreement brings together reactor deployment, high-performance compute, and world-class fuel and materials science expertise” said Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte. “We believe this will advance our plutonium-bearing fuel work on Oklo’s Pluto reactor, which was selected under DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program, and help bring resilient power in support of the Genesis Mission.”

Oklo has been finding themselves at the center of attention for multiple different private and government ventures. Meta provided Oklo a prepayment for securing fuel at a 1.2 GW nuclear campus in Ohio, and Oklo’s subsidiary Atomic Alchemy recently completed the majority of the construction at the Groves site in Texas. 

NVIDIA’s own CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly stressed that AI factories need round-the-clock firm power, a point we highlighted when nuclear stocks surged on his comments. 

With roughly $2.5 billion in cash, no debt, and customer prepayments offsetting first-of-a-kind costs, Oklo is positioning itself as a leader in the sector. HSBC initiated coverage the same day with a Buy rating and $96 price target, citing Oklo’s owner-operator model, DOE pilot momentum, and path to first revenue later this year from its Idaho radiochemistry lab.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/oklo-nvidia-and-los-alamos-working-plutonium-powered-ai

The European Union straitjacket

 by Bill Ponton

The European Union is essentially the project of a statist, bureaucratic elite and undemocratic at its core. From its inception, it was designed to wrest power from the democratic institutions of individual European members and vest it within the EU bureaucracy. In recent decades, it has taken on a hideous form with the embrace of climate eschatology and destruction of industry in the name of net-zero. Even worse, it has promoted unrestricted immigration to dilute and dissolve the distinctive European cultures and repress any assertion of European ethno-nationalism, while being blind to an assertive political Islam growing in the heart of Europe.

The European Union is a straitjacket in which its citizens are confined. As the recent protests in Ireland demonstrate, the citizenry may object to what is being imposed upon them, just as peasants in the Medieval period rioted to vent frustration, but essential control by the EU elite remains. The European Union’s central tool for keeping a lid on political dissent and protest is the Digital Services Act. It institutes what amounts to a modern-day version of the East German state security service or Stasi, for short, to keep an eye on restive elements of the populace so that online discourse remains within boundaries acceptable to the EU elite. It is the enabler of a surveillance state writ large.

With the DSA, the EU bureaucracy becomes the sole arbiter of what constitutes “hate” speech and disinformation. Never mind that “hate” speech is a relatively new term with differing interpretations and disinformation is any information that one disagrees with, so vague is its meaning. Like the East German Stasi, the EU bureaucracy employs legions of informants, what the DSA refers to as “trusted flaggers.” These trusted flaggers are approved organizations whose reports of illegal platform content get immediate attention. These flaggers do not make final legal judgments, but they can strongly influence the outcome — think of watchdog organizations like SPLC or Greenpeace wielding infinitely more influence than they do in their present state.

Under the DSA, Digital Services coordinators act on the recommendations of their trusted snitches and supervise a process that requires platforms to address these complaints thus ensuring compliance with the EU rules. Under this system, platforms have every incentive to exercise caution and censor content before it draws the attention of Digital Services coordinators. I recommend readers to watch the movie, The Lives of Others, for a depiction of life in East Germany under the watchful eye of the Stasi.

The police, prosecutors, and courts ultimately get dragged into this witch hunt. Unlike in the USA where citizens’ right to freedom of speech is recognized under the First Amendment, police and prosecutors in the EU decide whether to investigate or charge based on their assessment of the criminality of particular speech and ultimately, courts decide whether a specific statement is illegal hate speech. Whereas in America, ideas are voiced freely and compete on their merits in the public forum, the EU elite does not trust the populace to choose wisely. By wisely, they mean unquestioning submission to the dogma of the climate eschatological cult and the belief that migration is good in any form and at any scale, even if it subsumes your own culture in the process.

The framework for the formation of the European Union is unlike what our Founding Fathers provided to us with the US Constitution. The EU’s Founding Fathers—Schuman, Monnet, and Adenauer—were distrustful of the European populace to do what would be in their long-term best interest. They proceeded forward with the recent memory of the Nazi era and subsequent European destruction. What started out as a plan for a common market evolved into a plan to integrate Europe politically. It has matured into a statist central planner’s delight with the same sclerotic bureaucracy that once gripped the Soviet Union. At any rate, the EU model of governance is at odds with the U.S. model, which makes it almost inevitable that the EU and the Trump administration are on a collision course with regards to the DSA.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/the_european_union_straitjacket.html

Islam's Sexual Predator Problem

 California is canceling Cesar Chavez because of allegations that he sexually abused women. As a result, Cesar Chavez Day has been renamed Farmworkers Day, and streets, schools, plazas, and libraries named after him are being renamed.

In place of the alleged sexual predator, California is considering adding not just one but two Islamic holidays that will indirectly honor another sexual predator. Rather than using their Islamic names, which most Americans don’t know or understand, let’s call them Muhammad Day 1 and 2. According to hadith reports, which Muslims consider sacred, Muhammad, the founder and prophet of Islam, was a pedophile, a serial rapist, and a sex trafficker.

For those unfamiliar with hadith reports, they are collections of Muhammad’s actions and sayings. The best-known collection is that of Bukhari, who compiled over 500,000 reports. However, he considered only about 5,000 trustworthy and suitable for inclusion. In other words, he discarded 495,000 reports, yet deemed reports of Muhammad’s pedophilia, serial rape, and sex trafficking credible. Bukhari and other hadith collectors could have excluded them as embarrassing or damaging to Muhammad’s character or legacy. However, they were included because being a pedophile, rapist, and sex trafficker is apparently who Muslims are and what Muslims do.

Pedophile Muhammad

Muhammad married Aisha when she was six or seven, but he waited until she was nine to consummate the marriage. Aisha stated that she was playing on a swing with her friends when her mother or some women came and took her to a hut where she was decorated, and then taken to Muhammad for the consummation of the marriage. Aisha noted that at the time of the consummation, she was still playing with dolls. When he was raping Aisha, Muhammad was also married to Sauda, who was described as widowed, bulky, and fat, while Aisha was described as a virgin and beautiful. Although Muhammad was required to spend equal nights with his wives, Sauda gave her night to Aisha, who noted that one of her responsibilities was to rub, scrape, scratch, or wash the semen from Muhammad’s clothing.

Serial Rapist Muhammad

Along with the account of his rape of Aisha, the hadith also documents Muhammad raping other women. In Medina, Muhammad laid siege to the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe. After almost a month, facing starvation, the tribe surrendered. Following their surrender, the women and children were enslaved, while the men, estimated to number between 700 and 900, were taken in small groups, beheaded in the marketplace, and then dumped into freshly dug pits. The slaughter began early in the morning and continued into the night by torchlight. William Muir, who published a biography of Muhammad in 1861, wrote in polite Victorian prose that when the slaughter was over, Muhammad chose “to solace himself with the charms of Rihana, whose husband and all her male relatives had just perished in the massacre.”

Another documented incident of rape involved a woman from the Mustalik, another Jewish tribe that Muhammad and his bandits attacked and conquered. Among the captives was Juwayriya, described as a noble and beautiful woman whose husband had just been killed. Juwayriya considered her options: being gang-raped and sold into slavery, or offering herself as a wife to Muhammad, which would make the other members of her tribe related to Muhammad, and might secure their release from slavery. Captivated by her beauty, Muhammad quickly married her, and some of the captives were released from slavery. Aisha, Muhammad’s child-bride, was initially threatened by Juwayriya’s beauty, but she concluded that no woman was ever a greater blessing to her people.

The next account concerns a captive from the Jewish tribe at Khaybar. The tribe surrendered after a two-month siege. Believing there was hidden treasure, Muhammad had a man tortured and then beheaded. Muhammad then married Safiyah, the murdered man’s 17-year-old bride. Although Muslim men are required to wait more than four months before marrying a widow, Muhammad married Safiyah and consummated the marriage within hours or days.

Another rape victim, Mary, was a Coptic Christian given to Muhammad as a slave by the governor of Alexandria. She was described as beautiful, with fair skin and curly hair. She became Muhammad’s favorite sex partner to the point that he ignored his wives. After his first wife, none of his other ten to twelve wives became pregnant, even though Muhammad claimed he could visit all of them in a single night. When Mary, his sex slave, became pregnant and gave birth to a son, she gained even greater importance in Muhammad’s life, causing resentment among his wives. Aisha, attempting to diminish Mary’s status, implied the child wasn’t Muhammad’s by saying the infant didn’t resemble him.

Sex Trafficker Muhammad

Muhammad was involved in sex trafficking. In one instance, part of his loot from a conquered tribe included three female captives. He gave one of the captives to a father-in-law and the others to sons-in-law. When one of Muhammad’s followers told him that the son-in-law married to his favorite daughter had raped a captive and was unfaithful to his daughter, Muhammad, rather than being upset, said his son-in-law deserved even more.

Follow the Behavior of Muhammad

Specific details of Muhammad’s behavior are important because he is perceived as having an exalted character and is a good example to follow for those seeking paradise. So, for Muslim males, good character and the path to paradise include the serial rape of children and women and sex trafficking.

There has never been a more depraved ideology or one more incompatible with a civilized society.

Richard Crandall taught at the university level for 50 years, during which he watched the once-proud discipline of sociology transform into a cesspool of liberal lies, indoctrination, and propaganda. Consequently, he is now in a recovery program for sociologists, which, unlike programs with a defined number of steps, is a never-ending walk of shame. Fortunately, the program includes wine. In addition to several articles, the author has written books on gerontology, running, Inuit art, and Islam. He is currently completing a book titled Islam: The Evil Among Us.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/islam_s_sexual_predator_problem.html

California continues its collapse into ‘third worldism’

 by Andrea Widburg

America was once a high-trust, low-crime country. That’s changed in Democrat-run cities, which have deliberately opted for third-world-style policies: No policing, no consequences, and no Biblically-based values saying theft is wrong.

One of the hallmarks of the third world is that urban areas are low-trust, high-crime communities, where policing is invisible, and gaming the system, rather than supporting it, is a virtue. These societies also reject our Western reverence for private property, which sees policing it as being as important as policing life. The Western world figured out a long time ago that supporting the former supports the latter.

Rampant crime inevitably spells the end of infrastructure. If thieves can steal the infrastructure's prerequisites with impunity—the wires, fittings, valves, metals, etc.—the system collapses. It’s a downward spiral because more people turn to crime when they can’t access electricity or water, which leads to food shortages, since all of those things depend on a functioning infrastructure.

As an example of what I mean, look at what’s happened to South Africa. No matter how morally wrong the old Afrikaners were, they maintained modern policing standards, and their cities had strong infrastructure. That’s all collapsed, so much so that huge swaths of Johannesburg, South Africa, which is that nation’s equivalent of New York, are dysfunctional:

Theft is a significant part of the problem:

There’s always a temptation to say, “That can’t happen here. We’re too rich, powerful, well-managed, modern...” But of course, it can happen here. South Africans would have said the same two decades ago.

And here’s the thing, it is already happening here in California’s grossly mismanaged Democrat cities. In Oakland, California, which has had Democrat mayors for 49 years (and with each mayor more radical than the one before), copper theft is destroying internet connections:

Copper theft, a persistent problem across the Bay Area that has disrupted 911 service and closed a DMV office, is now knocking out internet service in Oakland, officials say.

 

Since the start of the year, thieves have been targeting copper cables used for telecommunications in the Oakland Hills, specifically on a roughly 8-mile stretch of Skyline Boulevard from Evergreen Avenue to the northeastern edge of Knowland Park, according to the Oakland Police Department. OPD did not detail exactly how many instances of copper theft occurred in recent months but said there have been multiple reports going back to late January.

AT&T spokesperson Chris Collins confirmed to SFGATE that an outage on Tuesday was caused by copper wire theft. The company also reported back-to-back outages, on April 15 and 16, he added.

 

That’s third worldism, a culture of theft because policing is broken, leaving criminals to operate with impunity. The city has erased respect for property rights.

It’s just as bad in Los Angeles, another leftist city that’s embraced third-world values and is losing its electricity:

Copper wire thieves stripping streetlights of the expensive strands have plunged residents of a Los Angeles neighborhood into darkness — as the toll to taxpayers reaches into the millions, a city official revealed to The Post.

Bandits most recently targeted Mar Vista, leaving several blocks of the leafy enclave without lighting and forcing locals to carry flashlights.

[snip]

Copper has become gold for bandits who rip into the bottom of street lamps to swipe the wiring inside and sell it for scrap. The cost of their crimes has skyrocketed to seven figures, with thousands of poles across LA in need of attention, the official said. A single pole can cost up to $2,000 to repair.

The thieves then sell the lucrative wiring for cash, no questions asked, with buyers often turning a blind eye to its origins, the official claimed.

It’s all a matter of priorities, of course. While Oakland can’t keep its phone lines working, it has the money for expensive “social justice,” non-white high school field trips:

Yesterday Steve Watson at Modernity News reported that Albany United School District, which is in the Oakland area, recently took a bunch of high school students on a very spendy and very exclusive “social justice” field trip across the country—so exclusive in fact that the white kids were barred from joining in, as this was only for “young men and women of color.”

Third-world policies quickly create third-world environments. And once those environments are in place, the rich white liberals who voted for these policies pack up and leave, with poor people of all colors left in the resulting pre-modern, savage hellholes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/california_continues_its_collapse_into_third_worldism.html

Moral Rot: Hoity-toity New Yorker writer describes stealing groceries from Whole Foods

 by Monica Showalter

Once upon a time, stealing from others was considered wrong. Punto, finis, basta. Most elementary school kids were able to master it.

Today, petty theft is not only rampant, owing to the reign of Soros district attorneys who don't prosecute crime, it's being celebrated by the rich, radical chic elites.

The New York Post presents this charmer from the breed:

A longtime staff writer for the New Yorker known for bashing capitalism bragged that she has stolen from her local Whole Foods “on several occasions” in a New York Times podcast. Jia Tolentino, 37, made the shocking admission while joining left-wing streamer Hasan Piker and Times’ opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman for a Wednesday episode about so-called “microlooting” from mega-corporations.
 
Examples tossed around by the trio ranged from everyday consumers sharing passwords for streaming services to brazen criminals pilfering paintings from the Louvre Museum. When Spiegelman suggested pocketing produce from Whole Foods, Tolentino confessed she already had “on several occasions.”

Do they ... do they really want someone like that on their staff? Might she be a liability risk?

Do they need to count the silverware any time they bring her into the company dining room? Can they trust her to go into the homes of sources and not lift something pricey from one of the host's jewelry boxes? Do they watch their wallets when she's in the room?

In times past, you'd never admit to being a petty thief, to anyone, if you were, it was too disgusting, too embarassing. Wasn't Winona Ryder, once a promising Hollywood A-list starlet, pretty much ruined aftet getting caught lifting merchandise from Saks Fifth Avenue?

This person is a thief -- and she's openly sharing it to the public.

The Post points out that she justified her thievery by claiming she's a communist. Vladimir Lenin, after all, organized thievery, called 'expropriations' among his Bolsheviks, and Joe Stalin actually robbed banks. Venezuela began to go downhill, according to a Venezuelan friend who was there, the moment Hugo Chavez advised all his red-shirts that it was O.K. to rob bakeries and groceries if they were hungry, because the owners were just wreckers and hoarders. And keeping up with the tradition, Nicolas Maduro's hideous wife, Cilia Flores, robbed banks in her youth, as did Brazil's wingman to President Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva, Dilma Rousseff.

Now we have this creature openly bragging about it to her crummy little friends on a podcast sponsored by the New York Times, while all the world hears about it.

This is far from the first time the elites in the media have shown their true colors.

Recall that NPR featured and promoted a book called "In Defense of Looting" by some dirtbag whose name remains mercifully obscure.

Recall that the New York Times featured prominently a Swedish academic who defended the desecration of irreplaceable fine art in museums -- throwing tomato soup, mashed potatos, and other trash all over it -- in the name of promoting the green agenda. Remember him?

And moving over to the Catholic-side elites, remember how Jesuit-publication America published an essay by some lowlife called 'The Catholic Case for Communism'? Same impulse as the others, same sickness going around.

What it shows is that the elites have not a drop of morality in them as it is normally understood, no sense of right and wrong, no respect for the values that make civilization possible. They are savages, and with savage values, their end game is a low-trust society where no one can be trusted and society can atomize into crazed fanatics loyal only to a leftist strongman.

What if everyone did that? What kind of society would we have? What if a mugger came up to her and told her he, too, was a communist? Would she hand over her purse?

It's grotesque.

When she was asked about it by a reporter, she didn't apologize, she flew into a rage:

Reason magazine has a good takedown on the whole matter. The New York Post has a spectacular collection of angry locals providing good reasons why that stealing act hurts them. City Journal describes just how gross they are.

The New Yorker needs to shuck this loser for moral turpitude and try to reclaim what little credibility it has in the wake of employing this character-flawed individual who really does need a good stretch in prison just to teach her right from wrong. I hope it's concerned about reputational damage. And I hope Whole Foods bans her from all of its establishments just to protect its inventory.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/moral_rot_hoity_toity_new_yorker_writer_describes_stealing_groceries_from_whole_foods.html